Upgraded Botnet Advertised

Monday, August 5, 2013 @ 03:08 PM gHale

How far does truth in advertising go when you are talking about cyber crime? That idea may come into play as the authors of the Andromeda botnet are advertising the release of a more dangerous version, researchers said.

There an advertisement unveiling the upgrade on an unnamed cyber black market, warning businesses to remain vigilant, according to a report from security provider Trend Micro. “The Andromeda botnet is still active in the wild and not yet dead. In fact, it’s about to undergo a major update real soon,” the blog post said.

“Just recently, however, we’ve uncovered that there is an ongoing development in the Andromeda botnet. This latest announcement was posted just recently and basically says that Andromeda code is going to be updated heavily. They suspended the sales of plugins to focus more on developing the new version,” the post said.

The authors promised the upgraded version will feature several enhanced features. “The project is undergoing a global modernization. In the near future there will be a few important but not visible changes,” read the hacker’s advertisement. “We will update the admin principal. All plugins will undergo fundamental changes both in format and structure.”

The changes will fix a number of bugs in the hack tool and make it quicker and easier for criminals to use.

Trend Micro reported the criminals behind Andromeda also released a sale on other tools. “Rootkit and Socks5, which are popular plugins, are also now free of charge. Previously, the rootkit sold for $300 and $1,000 for Socks5 with BackConnect,” Trend Micro said.

The new version’s exact release date remains unknown. The Andromeda botnet has been an ongoing problem facing businesses since first appearing in 2011. Researchers found the current version of Andromeda in March.